


Waking up Bucky

by spiderfire



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dehumanization, Drowning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Sleep, The usual winter soldier warnings, the ending isn't depressing - honest!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bucky did not wake up and one time he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking up Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit experimental for me, written with a focus on experiencing the world, as opposed to thinking about it.

(1)

He’s not quite sure what is going on, but he knows he is not waking up. Not normally. When he wakes from sleep, it is abrupt, a transition from un-awareness, to alertness that takes no perceptible time.

No, this is not that. He was aware of the cold, first. Nothing else, just a perception of bone-biting cold. Cold that goes beyond shivering. Shivering has motion and that is too warm for what he feels. What he feels is the kind of cold that a stone feels, locked in a glacier, carried along by the inexorable drift of the ice, only to be deposited far from it’s birth place. The cold is saturating, consuming. It is all that he is. 

For a long time, he is not aware that time passes, but it does and eventually he becomes aware of that, too. He becomes aware of being aware, that there is more to his being than cold, that he is a thing that exists, suspended in a frozen sea, cushioned and buoyed by the water. He is not the sea, itself. 

Abruptly, that too comes to an end. Sensations assault him. He is struggling to breath, gagging and gasping as something that is too thick to be air moves in and out of his lungs. His body thrashes against restraints but he makes no purchase on his smooth enclosure. He is shivering violently. The fluid that surrounds him drains away. He is blasted by air that burns. He is coughing and retching and the world explodes with light. (He had not noticed the dark until it was gone.)

He draws his first breath of air – air that is full of beeps and hisses and gurgling and voices – air that tastes sour and hard - and he chokes as dryness hits his lungs. Voices, clipped and precise, give orders, not to him but to each other. Firm hands grip his body and he fights against them. His struggles are ineffectual. There is a pinch and a burning in his leg. The light changes and the fight drains from his limbs like the suspension fluid was drained from the chamber. He feels himself go limp as the tension flows from his mind. 

(2)

He comes alert all at once. A dream, if there had been one, is gone as soon as he opens his eyes. 

He is in a hospital bed. By his side there are a stack of blinking monitors. Incomprehensible graphs scroll by. Displays of numbers flicker and change or stay constant. 58, 57, 58, 57 shows in one, 99, 99, 99, 99 says another. There are labels on the machine, but they make no sense. Something beeps and beeps again. What is wrong with him? Why is he here?

His hair falls in his eyes and he absently reaches up to brush it off his face. His fingers feel cool. 

He takes a deep, experimental breath. He feels fine. What the hell is he doing in here? He searches his memory for why he would be in a hospital but he does not remember. A car accident? A mission gone awry? Is he sick? He pushes himself into a sitting position and starts to swing his legs over the side. As he moves, wires and tubes tug from where they are attached. He is about to unclip a device from his right forefinger when his eyes fall on his left hand. He stares at it. 

It is shiny, articulated metal. 

The device on his right hand is forgotten as he lifts up the left hand, eyes wide and turns it over. What the hell?

A man in a white coat enters. He looks up at the man and then goes back to looking at his arm, still trying to understand. Experimentally, he flexes his fingers. The man says something and he looks up again. The words go by too fast.

The man walks over to stand next to the bed and he puts his hands on his shoulders, pressing him back against the mattress. He does not resist. “Where am I?” he starts to ask. “What happened?” but no sooner does he start than he realizes his words are coming out garbled. 

The man picks up a clipboard and looks at it before looking back at him. This time, when he speaks the words make sense. “How are you feeling, soldier?” he asks. 

He frowns because he feels fine but it seems like he shouldn’t. If he lost an arm, he should be hurting.

Slowly, it dawns on him, the arm must have happened a long time ago. How long ago? He begins to wonder, can metal itch? Because the more that he thinks about it, the more persistent an itch grows. Absently, he scratches at the metal, but it makes no difference. He does not feel anything.

The man puts his hand on top of his, stilling it and then repeats himself, speaking more slowly, “How are you feeling, soldier?”

 _Soldier_. That feels right. Whatever else he may be, he is a soldier. 

The man’s hand is warm and soft. He looks up at the man’s face. He has brown eyes and round wire frame glasses. He is balding and what’s left of the reddish brown hair is speckled with grey. There is something about the man’s voice that he can’t place. Something familiar. He frowns.

“I feel fine,” he says, because he does. If it weren’t for not remembering anything, and that infernal itch, he’d actually feel fine.

The man turns away from him for a moment. When he turns back, he is holding a folder. “Your mission,” the man says, handing it to him. 

He takes the folder and opens it. He finds himself staring at the face of his target.

(3)

He is staring at the face of his target, looking through the scope of his rifle. The roof is warm under his body. The sun beats down on his back.

He can’t remember getting into position. He can’t remember setting up the rifle. He can’t remember testing the wind (from the northwest, ten miles per hour). He can’t remember ranging the shot (753 m). He can’t remember anything before this moment, but there is his target. Gently, he adjusts his aim and squeezes the trigger.

It is a clean shot. The target goes down. He watches through the scope for a moment before toggling the radio with his chin. “All clear, Steve,” he says.

There is a pause before dispatch replies, “Repeat, soldier.”

Through the scope, he sees five specialists sweep through the target area. He frowns as he watches them. Something is not right.

Shouldn’t there be…? Shouldn’t he be…?

It’s not hard to pick out the commander of the team through the scope. Why does this seem wrong? The crosshairs hover over him.

His finger slowly tightens on the trigger. In the distance he hears dispatch say, “Stand down, soldier. Pick-up is en route.”

He lays on the roof, his eye to the scope, his finger on the trigger. From an even greater distance, a gun recoils and he hears, “Stand…down…soldier.”

The sun bakes his back and somewhere deep in his left arm an itch begins. When pick-up finds him, his right hand is torn and bloody, leaving bright red smears all over the metal. He stares at the black uniforms without comprehension. Where is Steve? (Steve? Who is Steve?)

The darts are a relief. At least the itching stops.

(4)

The darkness surrounds him, soft folds that press at him from all sides, suffocating and consuming. It clings to him, coiling around, pulling him down, down, down into its depths. In the darkness, there are shapes, images, too dim to see, too distant to be heard. He strains to make them out and tantalizing fragments drift by, too far to grasp. A locket of curly red hair, springing upwards. A single silver wing against a blue background. A mumbled word, said in a whisper. A bar of a song. Sunlight on blonde hair. Gentle rocking.

He tries to grab one, to hold it, to explore it, but they are just out of reach. The tip of his fingers brush against it and it slides off into the darkness. He is alone, adrift, when the blinding light comes.

He fights the light, trying to twist his head from side to side, to squeeze his eyes shut, but it is futile. There is no way to look away. And then it is gone and so is the dark and the fragments that floated there. 

He becomes aware of his body. His body is limp. Not relaxed, but limp. Gravity presses him down, not quite sitting, not quite prone. There are voices around him, muffled and indistinct. His tongue is thick in his mouth and there is a tang on the tip. Focusing on his mouth, the way the tongue softly fills it, the way his teeth are cushioned from each other, the way his lips are stretched and pulled around something, he feels a sensation develop near his nose. At first it is annoying, and then it becomes consuming. He tries to lift his hand to the itch but his arm won’t come. He tries to tighten the muscles in his face but it does not work. The itch spreads to his chin. And then to his arm.

There is a damp hand on his forehead brushing his hair back, thumbing his eyelids open again. This time it is not so bright. There are words, but he can not hold onto them long enough to understand them. There is a warm burn that spreads through his other arm and he stops paying attention.

(5)

Plink. Pause. Plink. Pause. Plink. Pause.

Insistent. Incessant. The sound of water on water. Except not. The pitch is wrong. 

Not erratic like rain, but precise, coming once every … every … Time does not really mean much. The sound is like a heartbeat, steady and sure.

He remembers…

_It was a warm winter day and he opened his eyes to the green branch of a pine tree silhouetted against a blue, blue sky. There was an icicle hanging from the branch. It was about as thick as his finger and it had bumps and knuckles along its length. As he watched, a drip slowly grows at the end. At first it just rounded out the tip, but it grew, slowly becoming larger, a pregnant bulge, stretching and elongating downward, developing a neck. Abruptly it detached, falling to the snow below. Immediately, the next drop started to form, engorging and growing, again and again._

He opens his eyes but there is nothing to see through the window, just the dull grey of the ceiling and the ghostly transparent reflection of his own face against the ceiling tiles. He lifts a hand to touch the reflection.

And then there is not even that to see. A hand appears outside the window and then a black circle fills the center of his view, leaving just a halo of grey, wide on the right and narrow on the left, around the edges. The asymmetry nags at him.

He is not sure how long the plunking sound of the drip goes on, but it goes and goes, gradually deepening in pitch as the volume fills. The fluid level is rising on his body and his right arm and legs feel buoyant. The left arm sinks. There is pressure as the broad straps across his chest and hips and forehead oppose the buoyant press of the fluid on his body. 

The sound abruptly becomes muffled as his ears are flooded.

It keeps rising. He can feel it against the side of his cheek. The fluid on the two sides of his body connects as it runs across his throat and starts filling in the gap between his chin and clavicle. It occurs to him that it will soon flood across his face and something deep inside him stirs. He had been calm, accepting what was happening without question, but suddenly he realizes, they mean to drown him. His pulse begins to pound in his ears, his breaths come fast and ragged. He tries to twist his head, to the right, to the left, but his head is held fast. He lifts his hands to the straps across his chest but his fingers feel thick and useless. They can barely even feel the smooth metal much less grip it. 

The liquid is cold. How did he not notice how cold it was? He is not shivering, he is beyond that. The cold has stolen his strength from him. 

It’s up around his chin, tickling his cheeks. He thrashes and tries to bang on the top of the box, but he can tell his movements are slow and feeble, barely making any noise at all. They must have attracted attention, though, because the black circle is lifted from the window over his face and he catches a glimpse of a face, of wire-frame glasses, before a light shines in, blinding him.

He shouts meaningless sounds and presses a hand to the glass. Fluid trickles across his cheeks and into his mouth. His shout is cut off as he gags on the thick, bitter liquid. He clamps his lips shut, swallowing the stuff in his mouth. It keeps rising. His hand is too heavy and it slides away from the window, back to his side. 

The fluid covers his mouth. He closes his eyes as the liquid pools in his eye sockets. The blinding light diminishes, shining pink through his closed eyelids. He is breathing through his nose, the breaths coming fast now. With one breath, the air he sucks in is mixed with liquid. He sneezes, trying to clear his nose, and when he does so, he opens his mouth again.

The fluid hits his throat and he chokes and coughs, unable to control the reflexes. But every cough that tries to expel the fluid only brings in more. Instead of clearing his lungs, the air bubbles away and his lungs fill with this heavy fluid that tastes of salt and copper. Someone calls his name, a distant shout, faint from above the surface of the water and a hand reaches for him. Desperately, he grabs for the scrawny hand, but his fingers slip through and he slides down, down. 

But he does not drown. Once the air is gone, he finds he can force this stuff in and out of his body. The sensation is more like gasping than breathing, but with effort he can breath, after a fashion.

He is so much colder as the frigid fluid penetrates his core. 

Time did not mean much to start with, but it means even less now. He is completely submerged. He opens his eyes and stares at the fading, distant light that blurs and becomes an indistinct blue blur.

By the time his breathing stops, he has stopped noticing anything at all.

(+1)

_The room is undefined except for the cryopod. It is upright and empty; the restraints are gaping open. Two men in white coats lead another man toward it. The other man wears only shorts and he moves slowly, as if drugged. Each of the men in white holds onto one of his arms._

_He watches as they turn the man and press him back against the upright bed. One of the white coats presses a button and metal bands snap shut around the man’s body. He takes a step forward. “Stop!” he shouts, but suddenly, he is in the pod and the bands are around him. “ Stop, stop, stop!” He tries to lift his arms, to stop the lid from closing, but he can’t move. He can’t move. “Stop!”_

“Stop!” it comes out as a squeak. He can’t move. He. Can’t. Move. Panic hits him like a wall. But then he realizes he is awake and it was a dream and he can move. Sweating and gasping, Bucky rolls on his back and stares wide-eyed at the ceiling fan that turns lazily overhead. Without really waking up, Steve murmurs, “It’s okay,” and puts a hand on his thigh.

 _It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream,_ he tells himself. It has to have been a dream. He never would have resisted like that. He couldn’t have. He wishes he could have. _It’s over. It is over._ Gradually he stops shaking.

Now that he’s awake, he has to piss. He gets up and walks to the bathroom, scrubbing his hand through his hair. As he walks through the short hall, he passes the framed pictures that fill this space, pictures they have collected over the years, pictures of the family they had made together. Avengers. The grandchildren and great grandchildren of Bucky’s sisters. Descendants of the Commandoes. Birthday parties. Weddings. Picnics. Funerals. Too many funerals. 

Tony’s little girl, Maggie (he chuckled under his breath, not so little any more, she was nearly twenty-five) had offered to help them set up a holo-wall, but he had said no. He liked the permanence of paper. The liked the solidity of their wooden frames. He liked that they were the same every time he walked by. Old fashioned, he knew but he did not care. This is what is real now. 

After he is done peeing, he opens the closet and pulls out an envelop that he keeps hidden under the guest towels. He does not think that Steve knows that he still has these. Steve would probably be upset and so Bucky just does not tell him. He sits on the toilet lid and slides out a stack of worn photos, many of which are yellowed and discolored with age. Like the photos in the hall, he likes their permanence. He likes the smooth feel of the paper in his fingers. He likes the way they do not change. This is what is real, too. For years, he had tried denying what had happened, shoving it down, moving on. He tries not to do that anymore. He shuffles through them until he finds the one he wants.

It is a picture of his face taken through the window of the cryopod. He can see the rim of window, the heavy metal frame and the six bolts that held the glass in place. He can see the edges of the light, as if someone had been holding a flashlight or exam light on the window. Reflected in the glass, he can just make out the shape of wire frame glasses. 

Through the window, everything is tinged blue by the suspension fluid. He studies his own face. In the photo he is clean shaven, his eyes are open and unseeing and his mouth is parted slightly. He glances up at the mirror that hangs over the sink on the wall across from the toilet, meeting his own eyes. Not much has changed. He supposes he can thank the serum for that. There are fine spider-tracks around his eyes and he has a day’s growth of beard. Unlike Steve who’s beginning to go grey in the way that blonde men do, even his hair is still dark. He looks back down and stares at the picture, telling himself again, it is over. 

He puts the photos away and heads back towards the bedroom, pausing in the hall at the most recent addition to their collection. Just a couple of weeks ago had been Steve and his fiftieth anniversary. Sam and Clint and Darcy had showed up mid-afternoon and insisted that, even though they were ancient farts, that they not celebrate alone. He and Steve had demurred, but Darcy, even Darcy at seventy, is not someone who takes no for an answer. Fine, they had agreed, a quiet dinner.

When they had gotten to the restaurant, it had been packed solid with everyone. Barneses. Distant Rogers cousins. Children of Commandoes and Avengers. They had even rounded up a few strays Steve and Bucky had picked up over the years. A couple of vets Sam had introduced them to, a wicked funny priest they had known for ages, a few of Steve’s artist friends. So much for a quiet dinner. He stared at the picture of him and Steve together at the table, with ridiculous hats and black balloons that read “Coasting down” and “Over the hill” and “Whose counting?” They both had big goofy smiles on their faces. It had been a good night full of laughter and drinking and stories. 

He’s getting chilled standing in the hall in just his underwear. He goes back into the bedroom and slides into bed next to Steve. Steve rolls on his side, grumbling when Bucky’s cold feet touch his legs. “You okay, Buck?” Steve asks, his voice blurred with sleep. Bucky curls his cool limbs around Steve, wrapping his arms around his body, tucking his chin over Steve’s shoulder. “I’m good,” he murmurs, surprised to find that he means it. 

He lays there for a long time, warming up, breathing through Steve’s graying hair, their chests rising and falling in unison. Eventually, he drifts into a peaceful sleep.


End file.
